Yours has come with the $130—making 503 with the previous instalment sent by you—Loving thanks dear friend to you & all—I shall proceed immediately (from what you say) to practically suit myself & invest to the extent you speak of.
We have had a very hot (& lengthened) spell of weather—sapp'd me badly—but I have got along with it & am quite comfortable this afternoon—It is a cloudy rainy day, here—very welcome—
I spend the time very idly—sit here by the open window in great ratan arm-chair, with a big palm leaf fan & do nothing—sleep, eat and digest middling well—pretty good spirits—am alone most of the time—bodily-getting-around-power almost entirely gone—What have you to say ab't the W W "society" project?1 & ab't Ch: Hartman2?
Walt Whitman bpl.00018.002_large.jpgCorrespondent:
Sylvester Baxter (1850–1927)
was on the staff of the Boston Herald. Apparently he met
Whitman for the first time when the poet delivered his Lincoln address in Boston
in April, 1881; see Rufus A. Coleman, "Whitman and Trowbridge," PMLA 63 (1948), 268. Baxter wrote many newspaper columns
in praise of Whitman's writings, and in 1886 attempted to obtain a pension for
the poet. For more, see Christopher O. Griffin, "Baxter, Sylvester [1850–1927]," Walt Whitman:
An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).